Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Why all the hate?

Disclaimer: This post contains opinion!


I have been thinking a lot about this lately, and I thought it was a good subject to bring here.
The fact is that anyone that knows at least a little how this community goes will know that one of the most popular critics is "That's not gyaru!".
There are guides and guidelines in order to become a (good) gyaru. A whole set of rules and do's and dont's.But still, this isn't enough, because from there it borns the "Doing X isn't enough to be gyaru!" discussion. It's not my intention to enter into this topic, as it's been discussed broadly and while I have my opinion like anyone else (opinions are like balls) but it amazes me that this is in fact a subject of discussion. 


I've been in different dressing styles (which belonged to different urban tribes, to call it somehow) and this was never a subject of discussion, so it makes me wonder why.


For instance, I highly doubt that if some guy starts getting interested in punk and listening to punk music and dresses alike to the musicians he listens to, I doubt he'll find anywhere a list of dont's. 
Of course, _every_ urban tribe has its own rules (because doing something and not doing something else it's what caracterizes them), and you probably won't see a goth in pink (or maybe you could, but yanno) or a punk wearing Swarovski decoden (that one is harder to find, right? although there are some approaches, lol).
And, well, every urban tribe has its degree of trueness and competition, but it's not at high and heavy as it happens in gyaru (or j-fashion in general, I dare say).

But... Why does this happen?

One of the first posible reason that I can think of it's because it has no musical background (or not as deep as other subcultures have). It might sound stupid, but if you fail to give the looks, what do you have left? 
The gyaru spirit? Sure. 
We've all come to this discussion in one point or the other. You can be a rebel, you can go against society and the mass media and the rules and averageness and all that stuff without being gyaru, so that attitude might belong to anything else. This wouldn't be like this if there was a musical background. 
Take goths. A teen might not be all dressed up in expensive victorian-ish velvet clothing, but she might listen to all those goth rock bands, and with just a t-shirt with the logo of the group, some jeans and heavy dark make-up there'd be no doubt of what urban tribe she belongs to (or at least her tendency).


Another reason that comes to my mind is that, under the surface, it's a highly competitive fashion. I'm the kind of person who finds it easy to like pretty much everyone and I really don't need much to grow fond of people and care about them (I'm a care bear, lol). I prefer sharing to competing but I know that there are a lot of people who like having adversaries. This is indeed a good way to push you to get better, but you might end up crossing the line of friendly competition to enter the realms of hate, and hate leads to suffering (and it's the path to the dark side).
(yes, this is what appears when you google Gyaru Secrets)

I also think that the fact that it's a japanese fashion is also somewhat of a barrier due to the racial (physical) differences. This might sound silly or wrong, but I really don't mean it in a bad way, but I came up to this conclusion a couple years ago when I made a first attempt at japanese fashion with visual kei. No matter how many make-up tutorials I tried to follow, my eye keept looking different. Then I realized that the crease in my eyelid was the reason of my failure.

I compare my pictures to japanese gyaru's and I fail to see the same. But that's obvious, because no matter how better my skills might get at make-up and hairstyling (at which, by the way, I suck) I will never see the same, since my features are different, for a start. Of course, there are awesome gaijin gyaru who grasp the essence of gyaru, who give you that feeling instantly at a first sight but... 

And finally, I believe that part of it is created by itself. It's like the feed-back creates the fear, the fear of being criticized for not being gyaru enough makes people being more critic ("because... I'm going to be criticized by ... you? you don't even look that gyaru!") and so on, and so on. 


What do you guys think about it?
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